


Demonic Daycare

by Serena_Rose



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, No Established Cheleanor, Unresolved Romantic Tension, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26450212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serena_Rose/pseuds/Serena_Rose
Summary: While visiting the Bad Place to try to reform the afterlife, Michael and Eleanor reflect on the idea of children being sent to Hell and Michael faces a blast from his past.
Relationships: Michael (The Good Place) & Eleanor Shellstrop, Michael (The Good Place)/Eleanor Shellstrop
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	Demonic Daycare

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda Gen fluff for a thought that came to me a while back I wanted to see a scene of, which is basically what Michael was like when it came to 'torturing' children in the Bad Place. It takes place during the Bearimy in 'Mondays, Am I Right?' before the guys go off to the Good Place.

While the Bad Place had its fair share of haunting nightmarish zones, from the fields of flayed bodies impaled on giant thorn bushes to the hives of giant penis-bees, none really chilled Eleanor more than the thought of a children’s neighbourhood. Even after their discovery that every single human soul who had ever existed for the past five hundred years had been sent to the Bad Place, the thought never crossed her mind of kids being sent to Hell to suffer for eternity. Maybe her brain had chosen to block it out so it didn’t send her crazy every hour the thought occurred.

She didn’t want to be here. But this was their job now. And to think she had fooled herself into believing that once the experiment was over, she and her friends could just have a forking break. Huh. It seemed that the filter was back on in this zone. Interesting.

They had managed to convince Shawn to allow them to change the system and revolutionise the afterlife. Now they had to make sure every area of this accursed dimension was being used properly and humans in each test or neighbourhood being treated fairly. No more torture, whether physical or mental, at least not for sheer cruelty sake. Just something light and beatable to put them to the test and make them confront their greatest flaws from their lives on Earth. There were so many kinks to work out and many, many demons who needed retraining (and reforming, in order to make them into mini-Michael’s). It was gonna take a lot of hard work and time.

Thank fork they weren’t up against a clock this time. So long as they were making some progress and Shawn didn’t change his mind, they had as many Bearimys as they pleased trying to fix this shirt hole.

“Ah, man. I suppose the closest thing to Hell for a lot of kids is school.” She says to Michael as they walk through what appears to be an all too quiet hallway lined with multicoloured lockers.

There doesn’t seem to be any signs of undead little life in the rooms they pass, other than a few demons hanging out in the teachers lounge who were waiting for their new instructions.

“For most kids it is. Others would sometimes be put in little houses outside, wanting to play with the others, but always trapped with a parent who kept making them do chores.” Michael explains; “And they’d have to watch everyone else play through the window, never being allowed to close the curtains.”

“That’s awful!” And why is that gets to her more than hearing about the flesh-ripping lightning strikes?

“It’s what the kid deserved for never helping their mom out at home and spending too much time playing.” Michael says, quickly deflecting when Eleanor throws him a look; “That’s what we were told, anyway. If any humans were sent here, no matter how small, it must have been for a good reason and so they deserved to be…”

Had she not turned her head at that moment, she may have missed the wince of pain across the demon’s face as he struggled to finish his sentence. Eleanor reaches out to squeeze his hand.

Part of her wishes he never had to come back here. That he never had to face all these regrets that obviously plagued him deeply, some of which he was willing to talk about with her, others that he felt were too much for human ears to take, even hers. But she, Chidi, Jason and Tahani required at least one trustworthy demon to be their guide to protect them when they visited these neighbourhoods and, while she got along fine with Val, Todd and the newly reformed Glenn, there was only one Bad Place homeboy she wanted at her side.

“Well, obviously, this all needs to go. Kids should just go straight to the Good Place.” Eleanor says, determined.

“I’d love to agree, trust me, but it’s not that simple.” Michael reminds her of what she really already knows; “There is no set ‘age of culpability’, it varies for each person, when they learn to understand empathy. And every kid has different circumstances, I mean look at you and Jason compared to Tahani and Chidi. One of you had a dirtbag upbringing with little love, sorry-.”

“No, that’s a fair hit.” Eleanor concedes, passing some of the drawings put up on the walls.

Scribbled lava monsters and kids falling into giant sink holes. What the fork? Is that what goes on here?

“Another had a dirtbag upbringing but at least had loving, if incompetent or dead, parents. Tahani grew up a princess but had about as much love as you did, not to mention competing with her sister. Chidi got the best deal and his parents still messed him up and turned him into the freaky ball of speckled anxiety we know today.”

That’s about the best way to describe her ex, Eleanor thinks with a smile. It had been almost half a Bearimy now since she and Chidi parted after he woke up, their time apart and his memory snap giving them the new perspective they needed to realise it just wouldn’t work out. She was over it, as much as she missed that caboose of his.

“What about babies? You can’t tell me they torture babies here.” Eleanor regrets the question before she’s finished.

“There’s an entire nursery neighbourhood just two train stops away. They’re all left to cry until someone who is clearly ‘not the mama’ comes to give them milk which is no where near warm enough.”

“At least they’re not being fed to demons.” Eleanor tries to console herself a little; “Okay so, maybe all babies are allowed to age up to a point they can comprehend the tests, to some degree. None of this having the test seem like their real life though. We can’t have demons pretending to be some poor squirt’s dirtbag dad or school bully. The more simple the soul, the more simple the test. These kids barely got to enjoy their time on Earth, it’s not like they got enough fair time to ‘study’. They should get a pass that lets them into the Good Place easier than those who are older. Case-by-case bases, it’s the only way it can be done, you can’t just lump people all together in one places based on what they’ve done- What?”

She pauses when she notices Michael has stopped and is looking intently at her.

Eleanor frowns; “What are you staring at, you big tree?”

“Just…you. Seeing you get so worked up and protective over these children. You’ve come a long way from gutting open your step-sister’s stuffed animals with a carving knife.” He praises her.

Step-sister seemed to be overstating that relationship. She still doesn’t regret being suspicious of Donna after the upbringing she had.

“Hey, I was just making sure my mom wasn’t planning to mess her up like she did me. My methods are harsh, but necessary.” She says, because it’s easier than admitting she was wrong. Which she wasn’t. Well, not completely. Donna proved she was capable of change, even if Eleanor had to accept that she was never going to be what inspired that for the woman.

It didn’t matter to her now. She had changed a whole afterlife system to save humanity. She had helped change a literal demon into a fellow immortal saviour. She had loved and been loved by more than enough people close to her in the past three hundred plus years. Now her mission was to ensure no one else felt they were beyond redemption, beyond love.

The proud look in Michael’s soft eyes seemed to tell her he shared the same sentiment. They had run their own fake Heaven together and now they were still a partnership, with a greater mission to complete. She’s not sure what the plan is for once it’s complete but, as she’s promised the nervous demon on many a late night; where she goes, he better be there with her.

“So where are all the little ankle-biters? They still in stasis?” Eleanor asks, unnerved by how quiet it is for a school, as if they had snuck in there after hours to steal booze from the principal’s office.

“I think they woke most of them up. There’s billions of schools across this dimension, considering the infant mortality rate on Earth, these ones are probably outside. We should go back to the teacher’s lounge and explain what you just said to me to those demons.” He says, his hand moving towards his middle while his eyes glance at the main doors.

“You okay? I take it you worked here…before.”

He had mentioned that he’d job-hopped a lot before settling as an Architect’s apprentice, having experience in almost every neighbourhood to try to find his purpose. Eleanor hopes Tahani’s quest is a lot less violent.

Michael’s lips twitch; “Dunno if it was this one but…Obviously, I’m not proud of what I did here, same as the other ones. Like you say, kids…It makes me feel even more sick about the whole thing…”

She gives his arm a quick rub.

“Let’s go do our thing and teach these demons a thing or two so we can get moving on. We can grab Tahani from the Lawyers neighbourhood on our way back and then get some food. I hear they opened up a Pizza Hut that has actual bread bases instead of skin flaps, at last.” She grins and is ready to tug him back down the hallway.

Then the bell rings and the doors open behind them.

“Oh, crab.” Michael mutters.

“Just play it cool, man, they’re like a third your size, pretend you don’t see them.” She whispers, not being that great with kids herself, but lacking the luxury of height.

A crowd of around thirty kids in the most bland and itchy looking school uniforms march in with despondent faces, some of them looking to the two new ‘demons’ in confusion as they don’t recognise them, while others seem terrified and keep their heads down.

Eleanor just nods to the ones that dare to meet her gaze, giving a cool smile and a zap of her finger guns.

“Wazzup.” Kids still say that, right?

The kids scream and scamper quickly onward.

“Finger guns tend to fire actual bullets here, so I’d avoid that.” Michael hisses to her.

Now he tells her!

The two of them try to slink away, sticking to the walls as the children seem to have been taught ‘Be Seen, Not Heard’, as if this were the most depressing production of Oliver Twist. Eleanor hopes that it’s not too awful for them in the classrooms they disappear into. One of the ‘teachers’ in the lounge had been a giant bear with flaming eyes but he seemed polite enough.

“Michael?”

A high-pitched voice makes the demon beside her pause.

They turn and see one of the kids with brown skin and long dark hair having stepped out from the slow parade and is glancing over at them, her big olive eyes gazing up at Michael.

He frowns and clears his throat.

“Sorry, small human, you must have me mistaken for some other handsome demon.” He tries to bluster and keep them moving.

“It’s you! Hey, everyone, Michael’s back!”

About a dozen or more other kids all gasp and rush towards them, Eleanor backing against the wall at the stampede of little feet, while many small arms try to reach towards a paling Michael.

“Ah, oh god, Eleanor, they’re attacking me! They want revenge! Save me!”

Eleanor chuckles at the scene and the absolute terror in her friend’s eyes.

“I don’t think that’s what this is, bud.”

The first girl who spotted him tugs at his sleeve; “Michael, don’t you remember me?”

He swallows a lump in his throat, gazing shyly down at her.

“Of course I do…Jasmina.” He nervously pets her hair; “Look how tall you are.”

“I’m still the same height I was five hundred Bearimys ago.” She pipes.

“That’s what I mean, look how you haven’t grown.” He says, awkwardly, putting his hand on her shoulders and trying to push the kids back a little; “Listen, you guys, I wanna say how sorry, deeply and truly, I am for ever torturing…Davey, did you just stick something to my back?”

“Nope!” A little boy with gapped teeth snaps his hands to his side.

Eleanor covers her mouth to try not to laugh, sharing a wink with the kid.

Michael groans as he reaches back to grab the post-it note before making the mistake of reading it aloud; “ _Hug me?_ Wait, NO!”

Too late, the group of kids are all crushing him against the wall again, trying to wrap themselves around while Eleanor and the rest of the kids can only watch in entertainment. She’s tempted to ask the Bad Janet who is herding them back to their classes if she can have some popcorn to share around.

Michael squirms, as red as Eleanor has ever seen him as the kids all jump on him. It might be the first time she’s ever seen him be so averse to human affection.

“Hey, hey, I’m trying to apologise here!” He protests.

“Why?” Davey asks; “You were the best demon we ever had.”

The plot thickens, Eleanor thinks with a smirk.

“I…What?” Michael frowns.

“You guys all liked it when Michael was here?” Eleanor slides in.

“He was super nice to us.” A little red haired girl says, gazing up at the tall immortal as if he was the first boy-band poster on her wall.

“That’s a lie. I was a terrifying tormentor!” Michael objects.

“He used to let us eat McDonalds for dinner every night.” Jasmina tells Eleanor, cheekily.

“But the Happy Meal toys were always those crabby ones with half the pieces missing! And there was no ketchup with the fries!” Michael says, as if wanting to revel in his demonic acts again.

Jasmina shrugs; “I grew up eating crumbs until I died of malnutrition, so I didn’t mind.”

Eleanor feels her heart almost fall out of her chest.

“And we got to have slumber parties and movie nights!” Davey cheers, somehow having managed to climb his way onto Michael’s back and nearly onto his shoulders.

The demon turns and grabs the wriggling sprog, placing him down.

“Yeah, those pirated VHS versions with the awful sound! No blu ray dvds!” Michael continues to say; “I was absolutely diabolical, no punches pulled, right guys?”

They all start hugging him again.

“Oh, farts.” He curses, making them all laugh.

“Michael, are you gonna come back to torture us again?” Jasmina asks, sweetly, “We missed you.”

That seems to melt the demon a little. Eleanor watches as he sighs and pets the little girl again.

“I miss you too, kiddo. I’m afraid I’m not coming back, I’ve got a lot of work to do but…” He looks reluctant. Did he secretly enjoy working here?

Eleanor assumes that his superiors weren’t quite satisfied with his methods of torture on these little humans. She’s trying not to gush herself into a bubbling puddle of goo imagining all these little guys snuggled up to her favorite honorary human watching Beauty and the Beast, eating unsweetened popcorn and having to stop the movie so they had to go to bed early for their ‘punishments’.

No wonder he loved slumber parties so much. Was this the closest he came to bonding with humans before meeting her and the others? He was such a kid himself, despite the centuries on his clock, it only made sense he would connect so well with these munchkins.

“See, the reason we’re here, guys,” Eleanor decides to step in to help her pal; “Is we’re changing how the afterlife works for you all. It’s gonna be a lot similar here to how it was when Michael was with you. But now, hopefully, even better…Because eventually, you all might get to go to the Good Place!”

A collective gasp passes through the crowd like a wave.

Jasmina bounces; "Oh, Michael, is that true? Am I gonna get to go to the Good Place?”

The tears in the little girl’s eyes are what seem to break the final straw for the fire squid, who gives in and picks Jasmina up into his arms.

“That’s right, sweetheart. All of you will get there, I reckon real soon…You’re all so bright and smart.” He tells them, balancing her on his side while his other reaches down to ruffle one of the boys hairs; “I hope I get to come visit, just so I can design some special homes for all of you.”

“Can mine have a football stadium? And a fire pit?” Davey asks, his eyes almost insanely bright.

“Sure, buddy.”

Eleanor leans closer; “Hey, kid, you don’t happen to have a cousin called Jason, do you?”

The boy shrugs and turns back to the others. There’s definitely a Florida vibe to him if nothing else.

“Anyway,” Michael sighs, “I’d love to catch up with you but I’m afraid me and my friend Eleanor here have to be getting on, so we can make this place better for you all.”

The red haired girl makes a ‘oooh’ sound and twirls her hips.

“Is she your girlfriend, Michael? She’s super pretty.”

Eleanor knows which one is her favorite.

Michael blushes again; “No, she is not my girlfriend! She’s a girl who is a friend!”

That only seems to encourage them to break out in a chant;

_“Michael and Eleanor,_  
_Sitting in a tree!_  
_K-I-S-S-S-E-N…”_

The song they attempt stops short when they stare at each other in confusion.

“Ha! You forgot you’re all illiterate!” Michael gloats before curling his lips in regret; “Uhm, we’ll work on that too, try to give you some real education here while you get better.”

“You were the only demon who read to us.” Jasmina says, mournfully.

“Aww!” Eleanor coos at yet another sweet image.

“It was Roald Dahl books, those stories are terrifying!” He defends again, putting Jasmina back on the floor; “Now, I am happy I got to see you all again, but we do have to go. Just…keep being good and I promise to check in with you all soon, okay?”

Jasmina gives him a tug to pull him down again so she can kiss his cheek.

“Thank you, Michael!”

He has to endure about twenty more kisses and hugs before the Bad Janet finally herds them away, leaving Michael stood wiping his face and with a few more post-it notes pressed to his suit. Eleanor doesn’t think she’s laughed so hard since they finished the experiment.

Her hands reach out to pick the last few notes off of him.

“Ah. Now that’s more like it.” She beams.

“More like what?”

“That whole ‘stern-but-caring-dad vibe’ you were trying out before. Seems like you already had it down pretty well with those kids.” She smiles, her chest feeling so warm, “They forking adored you, Michael.”

He shrugs, bashful; “Well, compared to the Miss. Trunchblulls they usually have to put up with, I probably did seem like an…” he waves his hand.

“An angel?”

He shudders, possibly on instinct; “I guess, if you wanna go for the throat.”

Eleanor can’t seem to stop grinning; “Well, I think you do the father figure thing better with actual kids rather than your friends who are more emotionally mature than you. Especially when some of them have the hots for you as well.”

Michael seems startled as he looks at her.

“You mean…Jason?!”

“No, idiot. At least, as far as I know.” She laughs and adds another kiss to the collection on his cheek, a lot more lingering than the ones peppered by the children before her; “I guess you were always a softie, deep down. Sorry, I mean, obviously a real, unyielding sadist, going by how tight those kids wanted to hug you. A complete villain.”

“Thank you. That was pure vengeance, I tell ya.”

It doesn't take a bullshirt detector to see that he loved it.

Eleanor slides her arm into his as they walk back towards the teacher’s lounge. She can’t say her visit here, or even seeing Michael be all soft demon daddy for those rugrats, made her regret not ever having kids on Earth, and she especially doesn’t picture having any potential half-human half-fire squids to be on the cards, but just seeing how big a heart her favorite devil had always made her fall in love with him just a little bit more each day.

Maybe tonight, if they got a chance to rest between all this travelling and saving lost souls, would be the night she’d _finally_ let him know.

At least then, when those kids finally learn to spell, it will be a chance for them to get the song right.


End file.
